Black Shoe Diaries 2020 Prediction Game: Week One

The 2020 college football season is finally here and while we have not gotten to this point as we expected nine months ago, there’s still college football on our televisions this weekend.

With that, this season, the Black Shoe Diaries staff will be taking part in a prediction “game”. Each week a handful of games (5-10 depending on the week) will be picked for the staff to predict. Each staff member will pick the games straight-up, against the spread, and then a final score prediction. It’s all pretty basic. I would also like to note that the spreads for each game will be the opening spreads.

Point System:

If you guys in the comments were looking to play along with us (feel free if someone wants to do the working of keeping track), here’s our scoring system.

Straight-Up: 1-point

Against the Spread: 2-points

Correct Score: 7-points (In the case no one hits the correct score, the person closest to the correct score will be 3-points. If multiple people are say, three-points away from the correct score, they will all be awarded three-points).

Total Possible Points per Game: 10-points

As the season goes on, we will keep track of points and at the end of it will crown a BSD Staff Champion.

This week’s games:

Arkansas State at Memphis pits a quality Sun Belt Conference opponent up against a familiar team for Penn State fans. The Tigers have had quite a bit of changes this offseason with head coach Mike Norvell now at Florida State and running back Kenneth Gainwell opting out just to name two. That being said, quarterback Brady White has an argument as the nation’s top-G5 quarterback and this Memphis team still is loaded with talent.

SMU is coming off their best season since 1984 and returns a good deal of talent. While it remains to be seen if the Pony Express is truly back in Dallas, Sonny Dykes certainly has his program in a good spot heading into this season. Quarterback Shane Buchele could be in for a huge season as SMU looks to make even more noise in the AAC.

Neither one of these teams we’re all that good last season and on paper there’s not much to be excited for in this game. It should be a close one in my opinion, Middle Tennessee State does have the ability to be an exciting offense but will Army give them enough time on the field offensively?

The best game of the weekend sees two old school powerhouses go at it in Annapolis. BYU always seems to have exciting games against noteworthy opponents and pulled upsets of Tennessee and USC last season in back-to-back weeks. They’ll have the ability to win his game but much like the last game, how much can Navy dominate the time of possession?